MotionFire Motion Control Reference Design Consisting of FireFighter & FireDriver Modules Home->Altera

MotionFire Motion Control Reference Design

National Semiconductor, Arrow Electronics, and Altera have jointly developed a complete FPGA-based motor control platform with industrial communication interfaces. The MotionFire development platform provides motor control system designers a comprehensive platform for rapid evaluation and prototyping of new designs to reduce time to market.

A total of six galvanically isolated FireDriver plug-in power modules can be connected to the FireFighter logic platform to provide 24 phases or support for up to 12 motors. These generic 4-phase drivers provide up to 10A per phase at a DC bus voltage of 50VDC, have a 12A input current protection and are available with protected and filtered encoder and/or Hall Effect sensor inputs. Back EMF sensing on three phases facilitates the implementation of sensor-less drives, while synchronized ADC sampling is possible on all phases within the same PWM cycle.

MotionFire consists of:

  • FireFighter main board: FPGA and communications board
  • FireDriver module: Motor drive power module

FireFighter Module

The FireFighter logic platform is based on Altera’s Cyclone-III FPGA with power management to the core digital components provided by National Semiconductor’s PowerWise® family of products.

 

Altera FPGA Ethernet Power Supply & Protection Altera CPLD

 

Power-supply and Protection:

  • The LM2853, 3A simple switcher, provides the 1.2V core voltage supply to the low power Altera Cyclone-III (EP3C40F484) 65nm FPGA.
  • The LM2852, 2A simple switcher, provides the 3.3V for the 16Mbit serial flash memory for code storage and 16Mbit configuration memory. An additional LM2852 provides the 1.8V supply for the 256Mbit 200MHz DDR2 SDRAM memory I/Os.
  • The LP5900, ultra low noise linear regulator for RF circuits, provides a clean and noise free 2.5V supply to the Altera Cyclone-III PLLs.
  • The LM5576, 3A step down switching regulator, generates the 5V interface supply and the mid-rail voltage on the board which is used for powering the other regulators. Input voltages up to 65VDC are supported allowing the use of the same power source on the FireDriver plug-in modules.

Ethernet Solutions

  • Two DP83848K, single 10/100 BaseT Ethernet PHYs provide control access and interface to the LAN network to enable realtime Ethernet protocol IP. The DP83848K supports both MII and RMII interfaces and provides Auto-MDIX functionality to remove cabling complications. National also offers the DP83640 10/100 PHY with IEEE 1588 for precise (8 ns timestamp resolution) control of networked motors.

FireDriver Module

FireDriver power modules are built around National Semiconductor’s high-performance power management and analog signal path technologies enabling improved motor control dynamic performance and energy efficiency in a closed loop system.

 

Altera CPLD Analog Signal Aquisition Gate Drive Power Supply & Protection

 

Power Supply and Protection

This block consists of the basic power supply, current sense and polarity protection.

  • The LM5007, 80V step down switching regulator, provides the 12V mid-rail supply for the logic and analog linear regulators.
  • Four LM1117s provide for separate 3.3V analog and digital power rails, a 5V analog supply, and the CPLD controlled Hall-effect sensor supply.
  • The LM3722, microprocessor supervisory/reset circuit, monitors the power supplies and provides a reset to the Altera MAX-II CPLD to prevent damage to any external circuitry as the result of a shoot-through condition.

Gate Drive and Power Stage

  • The LM5101, integrated bootstrap driver, is the core of the gate drive and power stage for the motors. The LM5101 drives both the high and low side of a dual N-channel half bridge with high gate-drive current providing efficient drive and switching characteristics of the MOSFETs.
  • The LM95071, 13-bit plus sign temperature sensor with SPI interface, monitors the high power stages for both efficiency and protection from overheating.
  • An LMV331 comparator provides current limit protection and will signal the on board CPLD that an over current condition has been detected, forcing the drive into inhibit state to protect against motor and system damage.

Analog Acquisition

  • Six ADC121S101, single-channel 1Msps 12 bit ADCs, measure the bus voltages, phase currents, input current, halls supply voltage and provide for two auxiliary analog inputs that can be used for a resolver interface.
  • Six LMH6618, single channel, rail-to-rail input amplifiers, drive the ADC121S101 ADCs. The LMH6618 provides the high speed, low supply current and low noise features needed to ensure accurate data conversions on the ADC121S101.
  • The LM339, quad comparator, serves as a zero-crossing detection block providing data for back EMF zero-crossing on three of the phases. This block allows for the implementation of sensor-less motor control.

Ordering Information & Related Links